Grammar May Be Hidden in Toddler Babble

The little sounds and puffs of air that toddlers often inject into their baby babble may actually be subtle stand-ins for grammatical words, new research suggests.

For their study, Cristina Dye, a Newcastle University researcher in child language development, made recordings of tens of thousands of utterances of French-speaking children between 23 months and 37 months old.

Dye and her colleagues analyzed each sound the kids made and the context in which it was produced. The team said they documented a pattern of sounds and puffs of air that seemed to replace grammatical words in many cases. Their findings suggest that toddlers may properly use little words (as, a, an, can, is) sooner than thought.

"Many of the toddlers we studied made a small sound, a soft breath, or a pause, at exactly the place that a grammatical word would normally be uttered," Dye said in a statement.

"The fact that this sound was always produced in the correct place in the sentence leads us to believe that young children are knowledgeable of grammatical words. They are far more sophisticated in their grammatical competence than we ever understood."

Though Dye was studying French-speaking toddlers, she and her colleagues expect their findings to apply to other languages as well. She also thinks their results could have implications for understanding language delay in children.

"When children don't learn to speak normally it can lead to serious issues later in life," Dye said in a statement. "For example, those who have it are more likely to suffer from mental illness or be unemployed later in life. If we can understand what is 'normal' as early as possible then we can intervene sooner to help those children."

Previous research has shown that toddlers, before they articulate full sentences themselves, may be able to understand complex grammar. A 2011 study published in the journal Cognitive Science found that as early as 21 months, children could match made-up verbs with pictures that made sense grammatically. For example, if they were told "The rabbit is glorping the duck," they would point to a picture of a rabbit lifting a duck's leg rather than the duck lifting its leg on its own.

The new research on the French-speaking toddlers was detailed in the Journal of Linguistics.
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References:

Gannon, Megan. 2013. “Grammar May Be Hidden in Toddler Babble”. Live Science. Posted: June 17, 2013. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/37502-grammar-may-be-hidden-in-toddler-babble.html

Bilingual babies know their grammar by 7 months

Babies as young as seven months can distinguish between, and begin to learn, two languages with vastly different grammatical structures, according to new research from the University of British Columbia and Université Paris Descartes.

Published today in the journal Nature Communications and presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, the study shows that infants in bilingual environments use pitch and duration cues to discriminate between languages – such as English and Japanese – with opposite word orders.

In English, a function word comes before a content word (the dog, his hat, with friends, for example) and the duration of the content word is longer, while in Japanese or Hindi, the order is reversed, and the pitch of the content word higher.

"By as early as seven months, babies are sensitive to these differences and use these as cues to tell the languages apart," says UBC psychologist Janet Werker, co-author of the study.

Previous research by Werker and Judit Gervain, a linguist at the Université Paris Descartes and co-author of the new study, showed that babies use frequency of words in speech to discern their significance.

"For example, in English the words 'the' and 'with' come up a lot more frequently than other words – they're essentially learning by counting," says Gervain. "But babies growing up bilingual need more than that, so they develop new strategies that monolingual babies don't necessarily need to use."

"If you speak two languages at home, don't be afraid, it's not a zero-sum game," says Werker. "Your baby is very equipped to keep these languages separate and they do so in remarkable ways."
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References:

EurekAlert. 2013. “Bilingual babies know their grammar by 7 months”. EurekAlert. Posted: February 14, 2013. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/uobc-bbk021113.php

Babies embrace punishment earlier than previously thought, study suggests

Babies as young as eight months old prefer it when people who commit or condone antisocial acts are mistreated, a new study led by a University of British Columbia psychologist finds.

While previous research shows that babies uniformly prefer kind acts, the new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that eight month-old infants support negative behavior if it is directed at those who act antisocially – and dislike those who are nice to bad guys.

“We find that, by eight months, babies have developed nuanced views of reciprocity and can conduct these complex social evaluations much earlier than previously thought,” says lead author Prof. Kiley Hamlin, UBC Dept of Psychology, who co-authored the study with colleagues from Yale University and Temple University.

“This study helps to answer questions that have puzzled evolutionary psychologists for decades,” says Hamlin. “Namely, how have we survived as intensely social creatures if our sociability makes us vulnerable to being cheated and exploited? These findings suggest that, from as early as eight months, we are watching for people who might put us in danger and prefer to see antisocial behavior regulated.”

For the study, researchers presented four scenarios to 100 babies using animal hand puppets. After watching puppets act negatively or positively towards other characters, the babies were shown puppets either giving or taking toys from these “good” or “bad” puppets. When prompted to choose their favorite characters, babies preferred puppets that mistreated the bad characters from the original scene, compared to those that treated them nicely.

The researchers also examined how older infants would themselves treat good and bad puppets. They tested 64 babies aged 21 months, who were asked to give a treat to, or take a treat away from one of two puppets – one who had previously helped another puppet, and another who had harmed the other puppet. These older babies physically took treats away from the “bad” puppets, and gave treats to the “good” ones.

Hamlin, who conducted the research with Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom of Yale University’s Dept. of Psychology, and Neha Mahajan of Temple University, says the findings provide new insights into the protective mechanisms humans use to choose social alliances, which she says are rooted in self-preservation.

Hamlin says the infant responses may be early forms of the complex behaviors and emotions that get expressed later in life, such as when school children tattle on kids who break the rules, the rush people feel when movie villains get their due, and the phenomenon of people cheering at public executions.

Hamlin says while such tendencies surely have many learned components, the fact that they are present so early in life suggests that they may be based in part on an innate foundation of liking those who give others their “just desserts.”
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References:

EurekAlert. 2011. "Babies embrace punishment earlier than previously thought, study suggests". EurekAlert. Posted: November 28, 2011. Available online: http://msnbcmedia2.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/111125-science-maya2-230p.grid-3x2.jpg

Peru archaeologists find pre-Inca sacrificed babies

Researchers at the Sillustani archaeological site in Peru say they have found the bodies of 44 children thought to have been sacrificed between 600 and 700 years ago.

They were buried in pairs in baskets placed around stone funerary towers.

Researchers said their ages ranged from newborns to three years old.

The archaeologists believe they belonged to the Kolla culture, which ruled parts of the Puno region of southern Peru between 1200 and 1450.

All the bodies had a volcanic stone placed on their chest, and were surrounded by a variety of offerings, including animals, food, dishes and pitchers, archaeologist Eduardo Arisaca said.

Researchers at the site say ceramics with paintings of scenes of war found with the bodies suggest the children were sacrificed during a period of conflict between the Kolla and a rival culture.

They said the bodies were found near a 10m-tall (32ft) circular stone tower known as Chullpa Lagarto.

The bodies of some 200 people have been unearthed near the tower at the Sillustani site some 1,300km (800 miles) south-east of the capital, Lima.

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References:

BBC News. 2011. "Peru archaeologists find pre-Inca sacrificed babies". BBC News. Posted: November 20, 2011. Available online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15813793